OLD HOLLYWOOD

It has been 55 years since Debbie Reynolds’s marriage to Eddie Fisher ended in a burst of Hollywood scandal, when Fisher left his wife (and two young children) for Elizabeth Taylor. And in the five decades since that highly-publicized breakup—which Reynolds herself has likened to the Jennifer Aniston–Angelina Jolie–Brad Pitt fiasco—the actress has become increasingly more candid about her marital misfires. In a new interview, perhaps her most forthcoming yet, the 82-year-old speculates why her marriages failed.

“My three husbands all left me for another woman and obviously I wasn’t a very sexual lady,” Reynolds tells The Express. “My husbands all repeatedly said the same thing—that I was not a very passionate woman.”

Although these statements might elicit a giant emoticon sad face in your mind, Reynolds says she is fine with her lack of passion. “I have never wished that I had had more sex,” she admits. “I was never a sex queen in real life and I was never pursued by men. . . . I was friends with Elizabeth Taylor, Ava Gardner and Lana Turner and they craved and loved sex and talked about it. . . . They were very sensuous women, desiring passion.” Reynolds says she preferred another extracurricular: “It seemed that I was more interested in raising my children, not in pursuing my husbands.”

Despite this fundamental difference with Elizabeth Taylor—and their personal history together—Reynolds has gone on record describing how the two later rekindled their friendship when they coincidentally ended up on the same cruise ship. The two remained friends and when Taylor died in 2011, the iconic actress left Reynolds “a sapphire bracelet, necklace and earrings” in her will. “She had her good side,” Reynolds has said of Taylor. “At least once she got over her sex drive.”